Morton defender Thomas O’Ware was devastated after his side lost out to Aberdeen in Saturday’s BetFred Cup semi-final, but he was also immensely proud of every Morton player for their efforts.

O’Ware turned in a real captain’s performance as the Championship outfit gave Derek McInnes’s men an almighty fright at Hampden, before succumbing to two second half goals from Adam Rooney and Kenny McLean.

While understandably gutted to have their dreams of cup glory foiled in such circumstances, O’Ware couldn’t hide his pride at coming so close to Morton's first major final since 1963.

“Nobody underperformed, everyone was brilliant on the day and we deserved more,” O’Ware said.

“It was a great occasion today and we never came just to make the numbers up, we came here to get into the final and I thought we were very unlucky not to.

“The gaffer just said that he was proud of the commitment, the determination and the organisation, he couldn’t say a bad word about the performance.

“He had spoken to us all week about stopping them, and it is testament to us that they’ve went a wee bit more direct because they weren’t getting any joy playing through us.

“That’s what we worked at all week, and every single man carried their job out brilliantly.

“Everyone deserved their place in the team, everybody played to their best and we said that nobody could leave anything in the changing room, and nobody did.

“I think it showed how good we were that they had to change their shape and their personnel two or three times.

“We did so well in the first half to ride the early storm and stay in the game. We stopped them playing which a lot of teams have struggled to do this year.

“We’ve had that glorious chance through Jai Quitongo and unfortunately he’s not put it away, but wee Jai has been brilliant for us this year.

“You heard their fans getting on their back in the second half, and we were right on top for a good 10-15 minutes before they scored, but couldn’t quite capitalise.”

O’Ware was devastated by the way in which Aberdeen finally broke the deadlock, holding his hands up to some sloppy defending on Morton’s behalf.

There was a suggestion that Andy Considine was offside before he headed the ball back for Rooney to finish though, and O’Ware also felt that a foul awarded to Rooney in the build-up to the goal was wrongly awarded.

“I’m just disappointed more than anything to concede the way we did,” he said.

“It’s a sloppy goal, they haven’t cut us open or had to play great football, so that was frustrating from our perspective.

“I was just heartbroken at the time that it went in, but I was a wee bit surprised at how far Andy Considine was behind me because I was quite high up and I didn’t think anyone was behind me.

“Jamie McDonagh was picking up Considine though, and then it’s come back over and it’s just a great header by Rooney to loop it over the keeper.

“If you look earlier in the move though, yes there’s dangerous play in football, but McDonagh has gone to clear it and Rooney has put his head down, so that’s not a foul.

“That makes it doubly hard to take. If they cut us open then we’ll hold our hands up, they’re the second best team in the country, so we wouldn’t say anything about that.

“It’s not a foul in my opinion, but then it’s sloppy from us after that.

“It’s just frustrating because we dealt with them all day and then a goal comes from a situation that was nowhere near a foul in the first place.”

Despite their Hampden heartache, O’Ware says that Morton must now dust themselves down and get back to the nitty gritty of Championship business.

“We’ll take a couple of days to recover from this one, but the boys go into every game wanting to win,” he said.

“The league is our priority. Any run we get in the cups is a bonus, but as the gaffer always says, getting points in the league is more important.

“We want to keep climbing that table and do even better than we did last year.”